Cowboy Beans Recipe

It dropped below 90 degrees here in Tucson this week, which obviously means that Fall is on its way – cacti will start turning orange and losing their needles, the temperature will drop, and it’s time to break out the comfort food…right?

Okay, so cacti don’t actually turn orange and lose their needles and the temperature won’t be dropping for some time now.

But, I still made comfort food.  Because I can.  97 degree temperatures can’t stop my culinary recognition of the change of seasons.  Take that, Tucson!

I have absolutely no idea where this recipe originally came from, but my mom made it for us growing up and it was one of my favorite cold weather foods. It’s fantastic over brown rice, which I always forget to make until the last minute, which doesn’t work well since our rice cooker needs about 2 hours to cook brown rice.

I had never made Cowboy Beans myself until the last year, so I was quite surprised when the ingredient list included Pork and Beans (weird) and celery (cooked celery is gross), but the ingredients combine into the heartiest barbecue-y, sloppy joe-ish, tangy mixture of meat, beans, and vegetables.  It’s warm and filling and the perfect dinner for a chilly night.

Or, in our case, a 97 degree night.